Microsoft Office 365 and Google Workspace are no longer available in French schools

with Office 365 Education i A workspace for educationvery Microsoft Ра Google Offer free versions of their Office software to educational institutions and students. however, French Ministry of Education Use of these free offers is prohibited schools.

The Ministry’s concern appears to be mainly about these free offerings and not the paid versions of the software. Free offers do not qualify for classification SecNumCloudwhich is the control of commercial products cloud by the French National Cyber ​​Security Agency (ANSSI).

Now it is over, but the security issue goes further, because in August Philip LatombeA member of the French National Assembly warned the country’s education minister, Papa Ndiae That the free version of Microsoft Office 365, no matter how attractive, “is illegal dumping”.

This term refers to the practice of selling below normal price or below cost in order to eliminate competition and capture the market. The word is generally used only in the context of laws International trade.

Here, “dumping” is defined as the practice in which a company sets a lower price for an imported good compared to the production costs of the company from the country where the good is exported, thereby putting the domestic company out of competition.

You may be interested in:

France is removing free versions of Office 365 and Workspace from schools

“Microsoft Office 365 may seem attractive at first glance, but offering this service for free is extreme and deserves unfair competition. It raises a serious issue of sovereignty because it is written above. Please tell us what you think about this matter,” he explained a few months ago. Latombe.

Write instead YesEducational institutions must use European cooperation packages “that host data in the EU and do not transfer it to the United States.”

It should be noted that not only France is in the EU, but also Germany Prohibits the use of Microsoft Office 365 in schools. The German state said that “Microsoft Office 365 exchanges information with data centers in the United States” in violation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Thus, it was banned in 2019 from the point of view of protecting privacy information.

You may be interested in:

And that’s why they believe Microsoft and Google are not complying with European data regulations and a 2020 European Court of Justice ruling governing cross-border data exchanges.

Despite this, both companies appear to be vying for European government cloud contracts. announced the service on behalf of Microsoft Microsoft Cloud for Sovereigntywhich allows public sector users to use the company’s cloud services on a legal basis.

They also want to introduce an EU user policy, similar to Google’s, which can be processed under data protection regulations by the end of 2022 and which can also be used in schools.

Continue reading: